Why Himanta-Gaurav clash is snowballing ahead of Assam elections

As Assam inches closer to the 2026 Assembly elections, the upcoming battle of the ballots has turned into one between personality cults of two of the state’s top leaders — Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and the chief of the state unit of the opposition Congress, Gaurav Gogoi, who is also the deputy Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Also read: Congress to focus on local issues in Assam after Bihar vote chori debacle

Both the strongmen have engaged in accusations and counter-accusations against each other as Gogoi’s party seeks to topple the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Sarma, who was once in the Congress and left it to join the saffron party in 2015 after developing differences with the Congress leadership. Tarun Gogoi, the longest-serving chief minister of Assam and the father of Gaurav, was in office then.

Gaurav overcame NDA challenge to win 2024 LS polls

The Sarma-led BJP had tried to ensure that Gaurav lost the 2024 general elections from Jorhat, but in vain as the latter wrested the seat from the saffron party. The latest round of their face-off has even seen the chief minister linking the state Congress chief and his British wife with Pakistan, trying to fuel an anti-national narrative against them in the process.

Gaurav refuted the charges and hit out at the chief minister over his alleged act of staging a symbolic shooting of minorities, as shown by a brief video clip which was later deleted, accusing him of inciting genocide against the minority community.

Why is Biswa desperately targeting Gaurav

There is a method in Sarma’s apparent madness, according to political observers.

They feel Sarma is more than eager to see Gaurav fail this time. Bhaben Handique, an analyst from Guwahati, told The Federal, “The desperation by Sarma and his coterie increased manifolds after Gogoi won the Jorhat seat by a margin of over 1,40,000 votes over the BJP’s Tapan Kumar Gogoi in 2024, despite top NDA (National Democratic Alliance) leaders camping at the constituency and the chief minister taking the battle heads on and making it his prestige issue.”

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Alarmed at Gaurav’s growing popularity and over the fact that he has a clean, image having never held power and maintained a low profile while his father was the CM, Sarma has been attempting to frame him as a Pakistani agent after clear signals had started to emerge that he will be the Congress’s face for Assam in this election.

Sarma's two-pronged strategy?

Political observers and activists also view it as a desperate move by the chief minister to galvanise various factions of the BJP in Assam that are at odds and rake up a communal narrative.

“The chief minister is attempting to carve an issue which attracts two segments of the party’s core voters — the ultra-nationalists, by invoking Pakistan and the Hindutva vote bank by raising the minority (Muslim) issue,” Mukut Lochan Kalita, a member of the Forum for Social Harmony, an Assam-based organisation, said.

“When he rakes up Pakistan, it serves both,” he added.

On February 5, the Assam Congress led by Gogoi had embarked on a rally attacking Sarma over properties held by his family, and had also launched a website, which as per the opposition party, has details about the CM’s alleged misgovernance and indulgence in corruption.

Congress's yatra, website targeting CM Sarma

The rally, named ‘Samay Paribortonor (Time for Change) Yatra’, stopped at locations having properties that are allegedly owned by Sarma’s wife and tried to educate the public there about Sarma, his properties and the BJP as a whole.

The website uses the tagline ‘10 faces 1 corrupt CM’, and highlights issues such as corruption, family-centric politics, politics of fear and intimidation, and betrayal of Assam’s indigenous communities, among others.

“The website has a feature titled ‘Expose Your CM’ and here the users can submit reports, photos, or documents regarding alleged scams or any land-grabbing. As soon as we come to power and a Congress government is sworn in, we promise to investigate all these claims,” said Bedabrata Nora, Bedabrat Bora, chairman of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee’s media department.

Also read: Did Assam CM cross constitutional limits by openly targeting ‘Miya Muslims’ amid SR?

He claimed that over 7,00,000 people have participated in this till now, and accused the BJP of attempting to hack the website after it was released for the public.

Sarma links Gaurav, wife with national security

On Sunday (February 8), Sarma had described Gaurav and his wife, Elizabeth Colburn Gogoi, as a national threat, alleging that they have links with Pakistan and are acting against India’s interests.

“Elizabeth Colburn Gogoi worked for an organization called LEAD Pakistan, headed by Ali Tauqeer Sheikh, who has links to Pakistan’s Planning Commission, and she was continued to be paid by Pakistani entities while working in India, bypassing FCRA regulations,” the CM alleged, even adding that Elizabeth had sent a 45-page confidential report to her Pakistani contacts that allegedly included sensitive information sourced from Intelligence Bureau (IB) documents.

Sarma did not spare Gaurav over alleged Pakistan links either. He accused the opposition leader of maintaining a “digital silence” over his 2013 visit to Pakistan and that his visa was uncharacteristically expanded from Lahore to include Islamabad and Karachi at the behest of the Pakistani government. He even suspected that the Congress leader might have undergone some training in the neighbouring country and it warranted central scrutiny.

'Flop show', says Gaurav

Gaurav called Sarma’s press conference, attacking him and his wife, the lowest point in Assam politics, and counter-alleged that it was done to divert the attention of the people of Assam from the Congress’s yatra and the website aiming to expose the state’s BJP government.

Calling it a “flop show”, Gaurav also said he felt pity for journalists from Delhi and Assam who had to sit through the press meet.

At his press conference, he pointed out that despite an SIT (special investigation team) investigation, Sarma failed to provide a single concrete piece of evidence, and pointed out that if there were truly a national security threat, the government would not have sat idle till the assembly elections.

The battle between the two leaders gets intense with each passing day, and their respective constituencies would have to wait for some more time to see who has the last laugh.